So, like several other comics webloggers, I received a couple mini-comics from the kind and good Steve Lieber: Me and Edith Head and Family Reunion. Me and Edith Head I had actually carried at the store, as one of our distributors (Cold Cut) had it available, and I’m always looking to expand our mini-comics section. (Used to do the mini-comic thing myself, but that’s another story.)
Anyway, Me and Edith Head by Lieber and Sara Ryan is about high school student Katrina’s discovery of self-confidence, juxtaposed with her dealing with her parents’ crumbling marriage at home. It’s a demonstration of storytelling economy – a lot of ground is covered in only 15 pages, and you’re given just enough background details to get the important points across. You don’t need to know why the parents are getting divorced…they just are. You don’t need page after page of Katrina’s fellow students giving her grief over being “unpopular” or “unattractive” or whatever…four panels total cover that whole arc. It doesn’t seem like it’s as short as it is…the comic is packed with information, yet it feels like a light read. It’s an absolute steal at its cover price of $2. I’ll need to order more for the store!
The second comic, Family Reunion by Lieber and Sean Stewart, introduces the lead character and situations from Stewart’s prose novel Perfect Circle, in which William “Dead” Kennedy (wearing a Dead Kennedy’s t-shirt, natch) has the ability to see ghosts…a talent tolerated, but not generally discussed, by his family. This story focuses around a family reunion at a park, where Great-Aunt Ginny Mae laments the long-ago death of her soldier son…and, as William discovers, that son is present at the reunion as well. It’s a quiet story, with a heartbreaking surprise about the son’s death, and since it now has me wanting to read the novel, the mini-comic was clearly very successful in its purpose. Both this comic and Me and Edith Head have a heavy focus on character’s emotions, and Lieber’s art is very much up to the task, rendering a while variety of human forms while making all the expressions recognizable.
If you’re interested in getting either of these fine minis into your own paws, give Steve Lieber’s official website a visit and send the guy a couple bucks.
